


Just Be

by MyOwnSuperintendent



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s03e02 Paper Clip, F/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 14:25:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12110670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyOwnSuperintendent/pseuds/MyOwnSuperintendent
Summary: After "Paper Clip," Mulder and Scully try to make a moment away from grief.





	Just Be

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own The X-Files or anything related to it. Hope you enjoy!

Mulder drives Scully home from the hospital that night.  He’s fully prepared to say goodbye at the door; it’s been a very long, very hard few days for both of them, and she seems tired.  When they were heading out, he asked her if she wanted to be with her mom now, saying he’d be happy to drive her there if she liked, but she said no, she would call her mom but right now she just wanted to be back home.  So here they are now, pulling up in front of her building.  He doesn’t really know what more to say at this point—it’s not as if anything he can say will change what happened to Melissa—but he wants to tell her, at least, that she can feel free to call him, that he’s right there if she needs anything.  He hopes she knows that, but it wouldn’t hurt to say.

Scully speaks first, though.  “Will you come up for a little bit?” she asks.  “I just want…”  She trails off.  “Do you have time?”

“Of course,” he says.  It’s rare for Scully to ask something like this for herself, to admit even tacitly that she’s not at one hundred percent, and he’s certainly not going to make a big production out of his answer.  They’re partners.  They’re friends.  They’re something tentative and new that’s started in the last few months, something they haven’t put a name to yet, something he’s terrified of messing up but gets more hopeful about every day.  Of course he’ll come up with her.  It’s as simple as that.

Once they’re in her apartment, he’s not sure what to do.  Neither is she, judging from the look on her face.  “Do you want to eat?” he asks eventually.  “We could order something.”

Scully shakes her head.  “Maybe later,” she says.  “I’m not that hungry.  I think I’ll make some tea, though.  Do you want any?”  He’s not a big tea drinker, but he says yes anyway, just to be companionable.

The tea brewed, they take seats on her couch.  He touches her arm.  “How’re you doing?” he asks.  “If you need to talk…”

She shakes her head.  “I don’t think I can right now,” she says.  “But you’re sweet.”  She takes another sip of her tea.  “How about you, though?” she asks.  “Your father…can I do anything?”

He’s grateful to her for asking, but he doesn’t think he can talk either.  It’s too much, too complicated.  He doesn’t know what to feel about his father.  That’ll take some sorting out, he knows, and this isn’t the time for it, not when she’s facing raw grief too.  “That’s all right, Scully,” he says.  “But thanks.”  He takes a sip of the tea too.  “I know you said you want to come back to work,” he says, “but do you want to come back right away?  Because if you need time—”

She shakes her head almost violently.  “No,” she says.  “I’ll be back on Monday.”  He expected as much, really.  She always wants to work, never more so than when she’s up against a problem that they can’t simply puzzle out together, no matter how much they would like to be able to.  “Let’s not talk about this anymore,” she says, setting her mug down and leaning back on the couch with a sigh.  “Can’t we just be for a little while?”

Mulder’s not sure if the question is a request directed at him or a demand directed at the universe.  If it’s the former, he’s happy to oblige; if it’s the latter, it’s out of both of their hands, and it sometimes feels very much like the answer is no.  But they can at least try.  “Sure,” he says.  “Sure, we can do that, Scully.”

Scully nods; there’s tension in her face, and he thinks about telling her that she can cry if she wants to, but he can’t imagine that she’d appreciate it.  He’s not sure whether or not crying falls into the category of just being, anyway.  She leans her head against his shoulder, and they sit like that for a while.  They don’t talk.  He rubs her back slowly.  She takes his hand in hers.

When she moves from her position, it’s to start kissing her way up his neck, which he didn’t expect, not tonight.  “Scully,” he says.  “Scully, hey.  We don’t have to…”

She stops and looks at him.  “But do you want to?”

They haven’t been doing this long enough for him to really know what it’s like not to want her: the whole thing still feels rare and new.  But this moment…it’s such an odd one, both of them reeling from losses and new revelations, trying to shut it all out while drinking tea on her couch.  “It’s not that I don’t,” he says.  “I just want…are you okay?”

“No,” she says.  “How could I be okay right now, Mulder?”  Her voice harsh, unlike its usual tones.

It’s a good question.  “I guess I didn’t mean that,” he says.  “Not in general, I mean.”

“I know,” she says, and now she sounds a little more like her, which is encouraging.  “I didn’t mean to snap.  We don’t have to do this.  If you don’t feel right—”

“No, it’s…I just wanted to know that you’re sure,” he says.  “That you’re not…”  He trails off.  He doesn’t really know what he wants to know. 

Scully nods.  “I’m sure,” she says.  “I want to be with you right now.  But don’t…only if you’re sure too.”

He thinks, nods back at her.  “I’m sure,” he says, and he kisses her there on her couch, softly, slowly, trying to give her a comfort that he doesn’t know if he or anyone has. 

Scully leans into the kiss, one of her hands coming up to cup the back of his head.  “Just make love to me tonight,” she says softly when they break apart, and he nods again, then takes her face in his hands and presses his forehead to hers. 

“Do you want to go to bed?” he asks her.

“Yes,” she says.  He holds her to him as they walk there.  They leave their mugs behind.

It’s only been a few short months, but already there have been wild times, playful times, fast frantic times and slow lingering times, plenty of happy times and once or twice angry times.  Tonight is a quiet time, a gentle time.  He unbuttons Scully’s blouse and kisses along her clavicle.  “You’re so beautiful,” he tells her. “My Scully.”  Sometimes words like that seem almost presumptuous, but right now they seem true: they belong together, fused by so many shared experiences, good and bad.  Fused body and soul.

It shows in the way Scully responds to him, the way she seems to be thinking just as he is.  “Yes,” she says.  “I’m yours.  And you’re mine.”  She’s unbuttoning his shirt now too, kissing as she goes.  “Stay with me,” she says, and in one sense he’s not sure what she means—surely she can’t think he’s about to leave right now—and in another sense he knows completely.

“Of course,” he says.  “I’ll always stay with you, Scully.”  He hopes that nothing will ever happen to keep him from fulfilling that pledge.

Both of their shirts are off now, and her bra, and they fall back on the bed, kissing, caressing.  It’s all slow tonight.  It’s about touching each other for as long as possible, proving to each other that they’re here.  He kisses her breast, brushing his tongue over her nipple, and she lets out a soft little sigh in response, stroking at his hair.

“Come here,” he says, pulling her into a kiss, even though she’s right there already.  Tonight, it’s not so much about the literal meanings of things; it’s about using their words for closeness, for comfort.  They’ve always traded words together, whether they’re sharing theories or doing that not flirting but maybe it really is thing: this is just another way.  He holds her against him as they kiss, their bodies pressed tightly together.  She hums into the kiss, a contented sound, and it makes him happy too, that he can give her that right now.

She’s reaching to unfasten his pants now, and he shifts back temporarily to help her along as she slides his pants and then his boxers down.  He undresses her too, and when they’re naked next to each other he resumes kissing her.  Her lips again, first, tender and lingering, and then the rest of her, inch by inch.  He really can’t imagine anyone more beautiful, although he doesn’t know how much of that is because she is, objectively, gorgeous and how much of that is because she’s Scully, whom he knows so well and cherishes so much.  But either way, he whispers it against her skin now: that she’s beautiful and amazing, that he wants to make her feel good.  “Yes,” she whispers back, “make me feel good, Mulder,”  and she clutches at him as he moves along her body with his kisses.  Down the line of her neck, curving into her shoulder, just lightly.  Her breasts, intently, thoroughly.  Her stomach, firmly and slowly.  And when she parts her legs and moans, “Please,” he hurries to put his mouth there.  Some nights he likes to tease her.  Tonight he’d like to give her what she wants.

So he doesn’t tease but gets right into it, kissing and licking her clit, dragging his tongue along the length of her with firm pressure.  He concentrates on what he’s learned she likes, on the touches of his mouth that make her moan and shift her hips and tighten her grip on his hair.  “Mulder,” she gasps out, “keep going, please keep going.”

“Wouldn’t think of stopping,” he murmurs against her, and when he strokes his tongue over her clit again she’s there, he knows, crying out without words.  When he looks up at her, she’s got a little smile on her face, and he has to smile too.

She reaches for him then.  “I want to make you feel good too,” she says, and she starts to stroke his cock, slowly but very purposefully, and he briefly wonders what she could possibly do that wouldn’t make him feel good.  When she circles the head with her thumb, he groans her name, lets himself linger with the pleasure for a few seconds longer before reaching out to stop her hand. 

“Scully,” he says.  “If you want anything more tonight, we’d better…”  He makes a vague gesture towards the pillows behind them.  Sometimes he wants to make speeches to her, but sometimes she makes him not great at words.

Scully gets his drift, though.  “Yes,” she says, and she lies back, pulling him with her.  Mulder studies her face for a few moments, struck again by the strangeness of these past days, beginning with secrets and deaths and ending up with the two of them in her bed, seeking something outside of what the rest of their lives have become.  He wonders if they can grasp it, if it will last and be enough and make up for the rest.  If, even as she asks him for this, she thinks about all that he’s dragged her into.  “Stop thinking so much,” Scully says; she always knows.  “Come here, Mulder.  I need you.”  She looks at him tenderly and strokes his hair, and yes, this is enough, he thinks.  At least for tonight.

He kisses her before he moves inside her, and while they’re making love he whispers to her again.  They’re usually pretty talkative—he’s never talked this much in bed with anyone else, but then again he’s never talked this much out of bed with anyone else, so it makes sense—and in some ways tonight is no different than usual, as he tells her how incredible she is, how good this feels.  “Love being with you, Scully,” he says.  “Don’t want to be anywhere else…God, I’m so lucky to be with you, Scully.”  And there are more words rushing to his mind: he wants to tell her that he’ll always be by her side as long as she wants him there, to confess that sometimes he doesn’t know why she does after everything that’s happened, to ask her forgiveness for any hurt he’s caused.  He keeps the words in, remembering what she said on her couch.  She wanted to just be.  Tonight, they’ll make love like any other couple and not talk about horrible things.

“I’m lucky too,” Scully tells him, sincerity in her eyes and her voice.  Somehow he makes her happy.

“I’m luckier.”  He doesn’t know why on earth _that_ was his response.

She gives him a look for a second and then she just laughs.  “It’s not a damn contest,” she says.  Then she moves her hips against his and says, “Come on, faster?” and he still knows he’s lucky, very very lucky, only he can’t think much about the specifics of it, not when he’s moving inside Scully like this, feeling her around him and looking at her face.  He reaches down to touch her clit, knowing he’s close and wanting to bring her along with him.  “Mulder,” she gasps, “I’m so…oh, yes…”  Then she’s coming again, and he’s coming too, right with her.  Maybe they’re both lucky.

He moves off of her as soon as he has his breath back, but he still holds her close; she snuggles against his side.  He’s tempted to ask her how she’s doing again, but he doesn’t think that’s what she wants, so he just says, “You’re incredible, you know that?”

“You too,” she says, and she kisses him.  “Thank you,” she nearly whispers, and he knows what she means, and he knows that she doesn’t want to dwell on it.  She’s giving him a smile, but it’s shaky.  He smiles back at her, and then he runs his hands along her back, rubbing up and down slowly until they both fall asleep.


End file.
